From Ignorance to Innocence - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 29. POSITIVE THINKING: PHILOSOPHY FOR PHONIES
He said, ”You must be joking.”
And nowhere is it mentioned that there were four monkeys... but I know because originally those four
monkeys were Chinese. They are very traditional, Taoist monkeys, at least three thousand years
old, so I knew the fourth was bound to be there. From Taoism they traveled to Japan, and they had
never been three. But his whole life he kept those three monkeys by his side; they are still preserved
in the Gandhi memorial museum in Delhi. But it is a lie, because the fourth is missing.
One monkey has his hands over his eyes, closing them. ”Don’t see anything evil” is the message.
The second one has his hands over his ears: ”Don’t hear anything evil.” The third monkey had his
hands over his mouth – not to throw a kiss at you, but: ”Don’t say anything evil.” What was the fourth
doing so that they destroyed him? The fourth was keeping both his hands over his sexual organ:
”Remain celibate, don’t do anything evil.” Now, Gandhi was worried that this monkey would create
trouble. ”Anybody coming will ask what he is doing. And just sitting by my side.... Destroy this one;
these three are okay.”
All the religions have been teaching these saints to practise austerity but when they are in paradise
and have freedom, it is going to be difficult for them, really difficult. The sinners will enjoy paradise;
the saints will hide just at the sight of an approaching apsara – that is a young woman that is made
available to all in paradise – and there are thousands of beautiful apsaras. You can call them divine
call girls... I don’t know how to translate that word because in the Christian heaven apsaras don’t
exist.
What the saints will do is start shaking and feeling nervous and perspiring, and they will close their
eyes immediately because that is what they have been doing their whole life.
To make clear the distinction between saint and sinner all the religions had to be ”realistic, the way I
am telling you to be realistic – to see the wholeness of a thing, the positive and negative.
Now this woman, Mother Teresa, is a bigger criminal than those people who created the calamity of
Bhopal, because she is not only trying to cover their laziness, their mistake, their error; she is giving
the idea that wherever such a thing happens you just cover it up.
So I say that when millions of Jews are evaporated, Hitler must be doing great, positive work:
perhaps with a smaller population there will be less poverty. And these Jews were the richest
people in Germany, so let their money and their riches be distributed. And anyway they are going
to die sooner or later, so why not sooner? What could they have done by living? So why make so
much fuss? They may have died from a very terrible disease – AlDS, cancer, or something – and
Hitler has given them the simplest and the quickest death, a painless death. Look at it positively!
But Mother Teresa will not have the guts to say, ”Look at it positively,” because the Jews in America
who go on giving respect to her will be immediately enemies. She cannot say that.
Why not take communism positively? Stalin killing millions of people – has she ever said to take that
positively? It is good: those millions of people are freed from life’s miseries, sufferings, troubles. But
she will not say that. Communism cannot be taken positively – her master, pope the polack, has just
declared that the very idea of class war is a sin. Now, is that taking things positively? Then class
war is not a sin but a virtue, if you take it positively.
From Ignorance to Innocence 435 Osho